Education & Training

• Practitioner in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), 2000
• PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Loughborough University, 2004
• NLP Master Practitioner, 2008
• EFT Practitioner, 2009
• Competent Communicator, Toastmasters International 2014

Dr Sasha Mitrofanov’s OCD story

Background

I grew up in an extremely anxious family within an anxious country. My grandmother lived through the siege of St Petersberg in WWII, and was badly hit by starvation. By the time she was 20, all her teeth had fallen out, and she had spent years in a stressful job of hanging out on rooftops during the siege, running towards unexploded bombs and tossing them off roofs. This would save buildings, and people’s lives.  Needless to say, she never got any medical or mental health support, and her whole life was derailed by the Soviet Union. She experienced two strokes, chronic high blood pressure, and heart disease, her symptoms either brought on or exacerbated by the constant tension that plagued her. To cope, she smoked a pack of Russian “Belomor” (strong rough-tobacco cigarettes) daily. My mother, too, has been nervous since childhood and suffers from an array of health-issues from high blood pressure to heart disease.

Until the year 1985 (I was eight at that time) the soul-crushing machine of the Soviet Union was still in operation, and after a seven-year stint of Perestroika, Russia stepped into its lawless 90s, characterized by empty shop shelves and mafia shoot-outs in broad daylight. It’s hard to be well-adjusted when instability and deprivation is the reality of life everywhere. It was nearly a war zone.

My childhood years were grim. I will describe two incidents out of thousands, all characteristic of my daily life. Once, I was cornered by a kindergarten teacher for being “too boisterous”. She screamed, spitting in my face, “you are nobody” and “keep quiet”. In the second incident, after a nurse threated me with an injection from a massive needle, a teacher escorted me through all rooms in my kindergarten, publicly shaming me as a “bad boy”.

The onset of my OCD

The anxiety-soaked atmosphere of my upbringing created a fertile ground for my OCD to rear its ugly head just as I turned 13. The most likely trigger for my OCD was scarlet fever that is caused by the same streptococcal infection that results in the rare PANDAS* form of OCD. The onset of my OCD was rapid (which also confirms PANDAS form of OCD). I started counting and repeating my actions and steps, and I constantly checked if the door and gas valves in the kitchen were shut. I think that the counting stems from when my mother (who always has meant well, bless her) would repeat three times, like a magic spell before I went to bed “Everything will be OK, OK, OK”. My obsessions were typical as well: I feared everything from harm coming to my family, getting a bad grade at school, to our flat burning down.

Development of my OCD

At 13, I started a very competitive senior school (only two thirds of my classmates graduated; the rest were expelled or emigrated to Israel). If I wasn’t anxious at that point, the stress-inducing surroundings would have probably caused me to become so. My obsessions increased in intensity and scope; I had violent images of hurting my family, which would terrify me. By the time I graduated at 17, I had a rich bouquet of compulsions: counting, checking, jumping over floor cracks, controlling my swallowing and breathing, and even compulsively crossing myself while praying to God and its many Russian saints. (Russia was getting progressively more Christian Orthodox at the time, sponsored by its government).

Even worse, there was zero awareness of OCD in Russia, and my mother was overwhelmed by my symptoms, always pretending I was fine even though she saw some of my rituals. I was getting more and more set in the idea that I was uniquely and irreparably broken. There was not even an idea to visit a mental health practitioner because of the stigma associated with being “special needs”. Having completed a YBOCS Test (a standard indicator test for OCD) in my 17 year-old mindset, I scored 29 out of 40 – in the upper range of “Severe OCD”.

First steps to recovery

As I entered my Engineering degree at university, I started reading a lot of self-help books that were just emerging in Russia. Everything from “Become Your Own Psychologist” to “The Origins of Anxiety”. I can’t say that having insights gathered from those books helped my OCD recovery, but at least I knew I wasn’t the only one in the world with similar symptoms, and that something could be done to alleviate them. I understood I was not irreparably broken.

When I was twenty-two, I was recommended to a 6-month Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) course. As I attended the course and practiced various NLP techniques, I witnessed my previously-intractable anxiety going down, even if slightly and temporarily. This was a breath of fresh air to my mind, hopelessly imprisoned by OCD. All the determination I could muster went to practicing those NLP techniques, and I would sometimes spend a couple hours daily doing them.

As anxiety started to release its grip over me, I was able to gain some distance from my obsessive thoughts. I started resisting my compulsions using cognitive approach and what I now realise was a form of Exposure and Response prevention (ERP). I was partially successful in refocussing to a different action, in a manner similar to Step 3 “Refocus” from Jeffrey Schwartz’s “Brain Lock” (that I discovered 10 years down the line). My YBOCS scores went down to about 20 (“Moderate OCD”).

Further recovery

After I received a full PhD scholarship from Loughborough University and moved to England at 23, I continued the intense self-work and education through self-development courses in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (gaining Practitioner and Master Practitioner status with the Society of NLP in 2007).

Shortly thereafter, I experienced for the first time Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). EFT helped me to control my anxiety in the moment, aided my resistance of compulsive thoughts, and assisted in deep treatment of my childhood trauma. My obsessions became less frequent and less intense as a result of EFT work, and I could start to breathe again. I trained in EFT for the first time in 2008, and more self-work followed. By that time, my estimated YBOCS scores dropped to about 8 out of 40.

Freedom from OCD

Well, I never thought that the day would come, but the intensity and frequency of my obsessions were progressively going down. I would only have compulsions when I was tired, stressed or otherwise under-resourced, and I would always stop a compulsive repetition of action in its tracks.

Inspired by effectiveness of the combination of Behavioural methods when combined with Energy Psychology, and having realised I was not passionate about my first career, I resigned from my University Lecturer position in 2009 and started to help others let go of their social anxiety, OCD and related conditions as a mental health coach. I have been doing that full-time for the last 10 years, and I continue my self-work, as I believe one must walk their talk.

I am lightly anxious some days. Sometimes my mind reaches in a compulsive direction when I’m tired or stressed, but I always stop myself before the compulsions start. I haven’t had an obsessive thought in years*.

My today’s OCD test result is 0. I am OCD-free & You can be too! And it doesn’t have to take 30 years!  

(*I am taking the liberty to not count my infrequent anxious thoughts as obsessions)